


“Fine! Leave! Just like everyone else…” & Blood at the corner of your mouth — F!Hawke x Fenris

by Amata_Hawke



Series: Tumblr Prompts [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Battle, Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/M, Heavy Angst, Tumblr Prompt, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 00:33:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19284442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amata_Hawke/pseuds/Amata_Hawke
Summary: This one fucking hurt to write, guys. I hope you like tragedy.





	“Fine! Leave! Just like everyone else…” & Blood at the corner of your mouth — F!Hawke x Fenris

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lylypuceonarchive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lylypuceonarchive/gifts), [sunlian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlian/gifts).



> This one fucking hurt to write, guys. I hope you like tragedy.

Blood, so much blood. The wood of her staff is slick with it under her hands and she has to work to maintain a grip on it as she spins it, slinging spells as fast as she can find targets. 

So many targets. Creatures of nightmare, the unholy union of fade demons and Darkspawn. How they came to be, Maker only knows. The courtyard is thick with them. Wardens, their blue and silver raiments stained beyond recognition with blood. Fighting in ranks, shooting from the battlements, fighting alone surrounded by the fallen. Hawke, in the middle of it all, more blood running freely from her ears.

Silence, the only sounds the ones her mind creates. Distant howls and war cries, the crack of thunder, and the bellowing roar of flames. She’s deaf from the thunder, lighting strike after lightning strike having blown out her ears, and she hasn’t had time to heal them.

So many fallen. Wardens that had been torn apart, entrails splattered across the walls; limbs belonging to Warden and Darkspawn alike lying discarded on the flagstones of the courtyard. A forest of discarded weapons. Shattered staves, splintered bows, swords, and shields, and maces, and hammers, all dropped from the hands of the dying. The air stinks of death, blood, ozone, smoke and burning flesh. The acrid, poisonous miasma of the Blight, oozing from the corpses of the Darkspawn abominations.

She sets the enemy alight, blasts them apart with lightning, crushes them under the force of the Veil itself, ripping at its already-fragile fabric. Whirling through the onslaught, dispatching as many foes with the blade of her staff as she did with her spells. Always at the corner of her eye, the glow of lyrium scarring, a whirling blade, white hair. Fenris, at her side, at her back. Guarding her flanks while she sows death and destruction across the battlefield.

Until he isn’t. Hawke is distracted by the battle, eyes forward or flicking from side to side, focusing only long enough to aim and moving on to the next target. Suddenly, there's a sharp pain tearing through the meat of her right shoulder, an awful ripping from behind as unnatural claws dig into her flesh. She howls and whirls to place her back to the wall, lightning shooting instinctively from the fingertips of her outstretched left hand. It strikes the creature as it charges at her, so close she can smell its foul blood frying it from the inside. The lightning jumps to another, and another, and still another—ten, fifteen, twenty abominations fall. The blast gives her a few seconds, and she leans heavily against the wall. Her breathing is labored, ragged. She shakes her head, casting her eyes around the courtyard. Where is Fenris?

A flash of white on the ground, shot through with red, the olive skin she knows so well, lined with white scars. Her heart leaps into her throat, shudders to a stop.  _ No. No, it can’t be _ . Hawke falls to her knees and crawls toward him, unable to stand, her staff forgotten at the wall behind her. It isn’t far; he must have been just feet away when he fell. Fenris lies over the bodies of the creatures he’s killed, eyes closed. Hawke can feel herself shouting, “Fenris! Fenris, wake up!” Her throat aches with the force of her cries, but she hears nothing. He doesn’t react to her voice, so she shakes him roughly, rolls him toward her. His chest isn’t moving, blood stains his chin where it ran from his mouth, his body soaked in it. His throat is gone, ripped away, a ruined mess of blood and torn flesh left in place of the spot where she had so often laid her head. Desperately, she closes her eyes, reaches through the Veil, begging for the help of a spirit, any spirit, who would help her to heal.

The Fade is full of demons. No spirit of compassion, or love, or faith, or joy, or justice…. Not one benevolent spirit to be found. There is too much violence here, too much evil. In the distance, the Black City looms, and Hawke stares at it in anguish. Hawke wishes bitterly that blood magic could help her, that she could get a demon to lend her the power to call him back to her, but she knows better. Hawke opens her eyes, but sees nothing through the tears that fill them. With nothing else left for it, she grits her teeth, summons every last ounce of power she has, and slams creation magic into Fenris’ body. She draws on her own life force for power, using the power of her own spirit and soul to bolster her magic. She feels her own life draining away as she floods him with it, and memories are flashing through her mind.

She is four. Her brother, Daniel, lies on his cot, his breath coming in labored, shallow gasps. He hasn’t opened his eyes in over a week. “The Hawke family is as old as Tevinter itself,” Her father’s voice, addressing their mother, heavy with grief. “Powerful magic runs in our blood. The Amells, too… but we’ve never been much for healing. I’ve done all I can for him, but… he may not live the night.” Daniel doesn’t live through the night, and three days later, Annabelle comes into her magic. She wonders, if it had only come a few days sooner, could she and her father have saved her twin together?

She is eighteen. Training with Bethany and her father, and the sky opens up in a sudden downpour. The canyons around Lothering aren’t safe, and they scramble to evacuate. Climbing the sheer cliffs, muddy grit shoving painfully under her fingernails, nearly slipping too many times, hauling herself up and over the edge. She turns around to help Bethany and sees her father stranded on a boulder, holding back the water with a shield of force. It parts around him, but the water is growing deeper, stronger, and more violent. Malcolm looks up as Anna pulls Bethany to safety, and she meets her father’s eyes across the distance. The canyon becomes a river with a sudden tide, and Malcolm Hawke is swept away before her eyes. They never find his body, but she finds his staff, caught in the branches of an old, dead tree. If only she had stayed, she cries to her sister, if she had been by his side, their father might still be alive.

She is twenty, and fighting for her life as she has never fought before. Fleeing the Blight, Darkspawn close on their heels. An ogre, more massive than any living thing she has ever seen before, shakes the ground with every step as it pounds toward her small party. Trapped between the monster ahead and those behind, Hawke lifts her father’s staff in readiness, but the ogre veers around her, hurtles toward her mother and brother. Carver raises his own sword with a battle cry, but the monster roars and snatches him up like a child with a toy. 

The creature slams Carver into the ground with a sickening  **_THUD, THUD, THUD_ ** , the crunching of bones, a scream cut short. Her mother’s anguished cry as Hawke turns to face the next threat, too busy fighting to help her brother. The fight goes by in a blur. A dragon clears the field for her, and Anna thinks only of Carver. She hurries to the place where her brother has fallen, her mother hunched over him and speaking to him with quiet urgency. Anna can see with a single look that there is no hope for him. Carver’s head is misshapen, sharp points of born torn through the blood-soaked clothes. Leandra is sobbing over him. “How could you let this happen? Your little brother!” Anna has no answer. Her mother is right; it should have been her, not Carver. His death is her fault.

She’s twenty-one, and they are lost in the Deep roads. Bethany has been looking ill for hours, and finally drops to her knees with a moan. Anna props her sister up with her shoulder, searching her eyes. Grey lines are spreading under Bethany’s paling skin, her eyes are filming over with silver.

Anders suggests seeking out the Wardens, but Bethany refuses. Bethany meets Anna’s eyes and makes the same request Ser Wesley had made of Aveline, that day outside of Lothering. Anna tries to convince her to go to the Wardens, but Bethany refuses again. “I’ve never been strong like you, sister,” she whispers, and Anna argues. Bethany  _ is  _ strong, she’s a force of nature, her way of looking at things brings light to their family. Anna can’t stand to lose her too, but Bethany is adamant. “Do it sister. Spare me the pain, please.” Anna cries, a howl of fury and pain, as she draws the knife across her little sister’s throat.

Her mother had begged her to leave Bethany behind. Anna should have listened, she should never have brought her sister into that place. Bethany’s death is her fault, and her hands are filthy with the blood of her family. She can’t help but feel that they’ll never be clean again.

She’s twenty-four, and her mother lies heavily in her arms. The body she occupies isn’t even fully her own; only the face belongs to Leandra Hawke, eyes glazed over in death, and yet the body still moves. The foul touch of blood magic lingers over her. Leandra reaches one desiccated hand to brush at Anna’s strangely dry cheeks, and draws a breath to speak, for the lungs no longer serve any purpose. “You’ve always made me so proud,” Leandra rattles, and the hand falls away. Hawke spends weeks in her room, alone, those last words echoing in her head. She had known about the lilies, known about the killings for years. She’d never thought to warn her mother. Leandra’s death is her fault.

She’s twenty-seven, and Kirkwall is burning. She’s killed the man responsible, but it’s too little too late. She should have killed him years ago, and now Kirkwall is paying the price for her arrogance. She crosses the bay to the Gallows alongside the Templars, she slays mage after mage inside. If she had chosen to defend them, all of Kirkwall would have been razed to the ground by the Divine, and no one would be spared. This way, she saves as many lives as she can. She can’t help but think, if she had only done the right thing when Anders began to lose all control, hundreds of people need not have died tonight.

She’s thirty-two now, and pouring her life into Fenris. Her magic surges through the lyrium in his skin and it flares brightly, searing her skin with heat. Hawke doesn’t care; she can’t lose him too. She pleads with him, calls to him with her voice and her magic, clawing desperately at the Veil to bring him back to her. The Chant slips through between her sobs, begging Andraste, begging the Maker himself to save him. Fenris lies still, unmoving, the flesh mended under her hands, but his heart is still and cold in his chest. Anna tries to make it beat for him, throwing her weight against his chest with her one good arm, shocking him with careful lightning spells, but she can feel the warmth seeping out of him. He’s gone, and she can’t call him back.

The sobs turn to snarls in her chest as a burning fury seizes her. Unthinking, Anna hauls herself to her feet., turns back to the battle. The battlefield is eerie in its silence, Wardens and Darkspawn and abominations all fighting and dying without a sound that she can hear. Hawke bellows her pain to them all, to all of Thedas, and rips at the Veil with wild abandon, calling every force she knows. The air itself ignites, lightning dances between the flames, the bloody flagstones shatter as the earth heaves underfoot and shoves upward in vicious spikes. The Veil itself closes around the combatants, wringing the life out of everything it touches. The magic spreads rapidly beyond the courtyard, engulfing the entire fortress. It claims everything, Warden and monster alike, and Hawke can’t find it in herself to care. She’s harmed or killed—at the very least, failed to save—everyone and everything she’s ever loved, now. It’s fitting, that her last moments should be spent on obliterating the monstrosities that infested the Warden’s stronghold, even if she kills every Warden in the place along with them. She feels it in her very soul when the Veil is sundered, and the last of her magic is torn away from her. The spells fade, and the battlefield is left barren and charred, without so much as a blade of grass to disturb the blasted ground.

Annabelle Hawke falls, first to her knees, then forward on top of Fenris. She struggles to draw one more breath, to lift herself again. She crawls laboriously over him so that her forehead rests against his. Her tears fall on his cheeks, and she clumsily tries to wipe them away. She winds her fingers weakly into his hair and pulls him to her as best she can, presses her lips to his as her breath dies in her chest. The last thing she sees is his face, and she wishes that of all the pain she’s suffered, she could at least be spared the pain of dying without looking into his eyes... one last time.


End file.
